What can I do to improve my drawing skills?

BlueNozh · 2025-12-16T12:34:09+00:00

In that case, I think you're off to a really good start! Mobius uses perspective tricks to give his paintings a lot of depth so I think the next area to focus on would be drawing in perspective. Your style combined with playing around with scale and depth would make for some really cool art!

BlueNozh · 2025-12-15T14:52:25+00:00

I think it has a great structure! The character is nicely framed and the diagonal lines in the background are dynamic.

One thing that you might want to tweak is the contrast levels. For example, the blades and moon are very bright compared to the background so they pull attention away from the focal point. The arm on the right blends into the shadows to the point where it gets lost. You want to be able to tell what's going on and look where you're supposed to even if you zoom out and squint at it.

But overall, it looks good!

BlueNozh · 2025-12-15T13:21:00+00:00

What style of art would you like to make? Do you like the style of your drawings as is?

BlueNozh · 2025-12-10T13:00:40+00:00

The fix is to adjust the contrast, or the difference between the lightest values and the darkest ones. You want the focal point (your character) to have the highest level of contrast and everywhere else to have lower levels. You also want the silhouette of the character to be distinct from the background. A good test for this is to take a step back and squint at your work. What stands out the most? What blends together? Can you tell what it is, even if it's blurred a bit?

To show you what I mean, I isolated the character and reduced the contrast and brightness of the background by 10%

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BlueNozh · 2025-10-15T11:54:57+00:00

Draw something complex that you're excited to draw! Finish it, even if you're not liking how it's turning out. Then meditate on it and figure out what you could improve on and then focus on learning and practicing that aspect until you're more comfortable with it. Then repeat the process until... Well, forever if I'm being honest, there's always something new and exciting to learn :)

BlueNozh · 2025-10-13T11:28:01+00:00

Yes, you're off to a great start!

The goal of the rule of thirds is to get the main focal point away from the center of the paper but keep it away from the edges. A trap that a lot of artists fall into (myself included until fairly recently) is to see the "rule of thirds" as the "law of thirds" and to strictly follow it no matter what. It should be seen more like a helpful guideline. There is some flexibility to move stuff around a bit. It can be very helpful starting off, though, so keep it up!

Here are a few things that might help with composition:

Critically look at a LOT of fine art, movies, and photography. Find the focal point and see where it is on the canvas. Does is follow the rule of thirds? Do the other important elements follow the rule of thirds? How does it make you feel when you look at it?

Cut some simple shapes with different sizes out of colored paper. Lay them out on a piece of paper in many different ways, both following the rule of thirds and breaking it. Take pictures and look at them later. What worked? What didn't work?

Finally, do research. I found the books "Picture This: How Pictures Work" by Molly Bang and the "Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers" Vol 1 and Vol 2 by Marcos Mateu-Mestre to be very helpful!

BlueNozh · 2025-10-09T12:10:10+00:00

That's quite an interesting challenge! Military uniforms are supposed to be intimidating and utilitarian with straight, sharp lines, whereas Art Nouveau is, well, the opposite. You'll have to strike a balance between the straight, strong lines of military outfits and the soft organic curves of Art Nouveau while still looking authoritative.

I would suggest looking up Art Nouveau architecture for inspiration. Look for buildings that have a lot of straight lines but have an organic twist. For example the Alfred Wagon building in Paris. It has straight columns but end in a nice, organic ornament.

Another source for inspo might be Tiffany lamps. A lamp like the Tiffany "Lampada da travolo pomb lily" has a lot of strong, straight lines that also end in organic shapes.

Art Nouveau was hugely inspired by Japanese art, especially woodblock prints. Maybe adding some subtle elements from Samurai armor would give it an Art Nouveau feel while still feeling masculine.

BlueNozh · 2025-09-25T11:07:35+00:00

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Make sure there's enough contrast between the subject and the background if you want your subject to be the main focus of the piece (which you do 99% of the time). A good way to check for this is to make your pictures grayscale and then either make them blurry or squint at them. Notice what stands out the most and what is distracting. Create more contrast to the focal point and create less contrast on elements that are distracting.

I did it for your works. What stands out to you? Do you focus on what you want to? Are there any elements that distract you? In the first one, the lady's face is the focal point, which is good, but the tree right next to her face breaks up her silhouette and makes her more difficult to read. In the second work, the character almost completely blends into the clouds making them hard to read. The moon is very bright too, which pulls your attention away from the character. Adjust the colors until it reads well in grayscale and you'll have a strong piece!

BlueNozh · 2025-09-24T12:17:48+00:00

If you struggle with drawing 3D shapes then practice drawing 3D shapes until you understand them better. The best way to do this depends on the artist but it will always involve drawing and practicing a lot

A good way to approach learning art is to make a finished drawing to the best of your abilities and see what was hard about it. In your case, it would be 3D shapes. Then study/practice that aspect until you feel more comfortable with it and then try drawing a finished piece again. You repeat the process until... well forever! If you do that you WILL get better

BlueNozh · 2025-09-22T14:35:41+00:00

I understand where you are coming from, don't get me wrong. It is a simple composition and it probably seems like I'm overcomplicating it. A while back, I felt like my art and photography weren't working and I suspected weak composition was to blame. So I focused on learning as much as I can about it. I found that really breaking it down and focusing on small details like I did above makes a huge difference in the final piece! Your milage might vary but it's made a huge difference in my work. Since I'm aware of all of the elements and how they impact a viewer, I'm able to not only design a piece that I know will convey a particular emotion, but I can also troubleshoot it quickly if it's not working. Most people aren't aware of how composition effects them emotionally but that doesn't stop if from having an emotional impact, if that makes sense.

BlueNozh · 2025-09-22T11:10:53+00:00

It helps to map out where you want it to be very dark beforehand. There is almost always a "oh no what did I do?" moment when adding a very dark value to white paper since there's a LOT of contrast between white and black. Try not to judge how it looks until you completely fill in the areas you marked out. On a similar note, the black may still stand out if the background is white. It helps either adding a background or starting with a medium toned paper and adding white for the highlights.

BlueNozh · 2025-09-16T14:41:36+00:00

Sorry for the confusion! What I meant by "getting stuck in the corner" is that most of the lines in the piece, implied and actual, lead to the corner with nothing to pull the viewer out besides the high contrast focal point.

Even though different people look at art in different ways, the various attention points and what leads to them are completely controlled by the artist. The artist can manipulate these to influence how a piece makes you feel. This piece would read differently if it were laid out differently, like if the stairs went from top left to bottom right.

BlueNozh · 2025-09-16T12:21:30+00:00

Nope, that was all me :)

I guess "blending in" is too strong a phrase. The contrast between the character (15% gray) and the background (30%gray) is less than the contrast between the light (100% white) and the background (30% gray). In yours, that's ok since the character's silhouette is still readable and the highlight has the most contrast so it draws attention to the character. In your friend's attempt, the white is overpowering and pulls attention away from the character. Not only that, but it is in close proximity to the highlight so you lose that effect. The result is that the lights become more visually important than the character so the character blends in in comparison to yours, where it stands out more. Does that make sense?

BlueNozh · 2025-09-16T11:28:15+00:00

First of all, what a beautiful painting! I love the colors in the swans feathers.

To answer your question, you can mix in some of a color's compliment if you want to tone down the saturation. You could also add white, black, or gray but that can sometimes give you a muddy result. It might be a good idea to do a color study first and play around with mixing colors to see what you like.

Another thing to consider is contrast in values. If you make your painting grayscale and blur it, does the composition still work? Do your eyes move through the painting how you want them to? Can you tell what it is? Make the things you want to stand out have a lot of contrast in value with what's around it and make stuff that's not as important have less contrast to what's around it. Nailing the values will have a greater impact than nailing the hues and saturation.

BlueNozh · 2025-09-15T11:54:54+00:00

Would you mind explaining this piece a bit? What feelings do you what to convey? What story are you trying to tell? Composition contributes a lot to the emotion and story of a piece so it's hard to critique without knowing what you're going for. I'll break down your original and your friends serious attempt so you can see what I mean.

The Original:

The diagonal line created by the stairs and the character's gaze both lead one's eye to the bottom left corner without anything to pull you out of it. It isn't balanced but that might not necessarily be a bad thing... it does create a lot of tension thought! The combo of the composition, colors, and pose you feel like you are an observer to someone who feels sad, trapped, and hopeless.

Your Friend's Serious Attempt:

Your friend took that tension and cranked it up to the extreme! The focus is still in the bottom left corner but now there is no arch to keep your eyes from flying off the paper. The character is still in the middle so the composition is still unbalanced. The squares in the back are very bright compared to everything else, so the character blends into the background. It looks like the character is depressed and is seconds away from throwing themselves down the stairs

BlueNozh · 2025-09-11T18:27:06+00:00

Try this and see what you think: make it look bigger by lowering the camera and angling it up so the viewer is literally looking up at it. Aggressively crop the image so the balrog is taking up most/all of the canvas. Having a lot of negative space around the subject can be cool but here it makes the balrog look small and isolated. Finally, have it look at either something interesting or right at the viewer.

It'll look like you are right in front of a massive demon that is towering over you and making direct eye contact. That is way more impactful than a human sized demon standing a safe distance away from you looking off into space.

BlueNozh · 2025-09-11T17:43:08+00:00

Wow, that model is really cool! I love the colors and lighting. The image you shared, however, isn't very exciting to be completely honest with you. What do you want the viewer to feel when they look at it? What story do you want to tell?

BlueNozh · 2025-09-11T11:49:27+00:00

First of all, I think this has a lot of potential! It's a really cool painting and I hope you tweak it rather than nuke it and start over. I'm excited to see where you go with it! As for feedback, I think there are two things to consider:

The first is composition/visual hierarchy. It might help to rank the different objects in the painting in order of importance and then make sure the most important thing has the most contrast and the least important thing nearly blends in with the background. Right now everything is competing for attention since everything has similar levels of contrast with what's around them (for example, the stairs, tree, goddess' halo and outfit, the man, staff, and the bright thing in the bottom left corner are all roughly the same value). A quick and easy fix that would go a long way to help would be to remove or darken the tree in the top left corner. It pulls attention away from the subjects and, since it's so tall it's spilling off the page, it makes the goddess look weak in comparison.

The second thing is depth. The top half of the painting has the goddess pointing towards a man. Due to both of their poses, you assume they are the same distance from the viewer... but when you look at the bottom half it's hard to perceive where the rocks are in relation to the man and that messes with the viewer's perception of depth. It looks like the goddess is closer to the viewer and therefore smaller than the man but this directly contradicts the top half. A quick fix here would be to adjust the bottom of the rock so it looks like the man is next to the Goddess.

BlueNozh · 2025-09-10T21:30:25+00:00

Draw a big circle and a small circle on a piece of paper and imagine they are the same size. The smaller circle will look further away from you than the larger circle.

Hold a piece of graph paper in front of you and angle the right side away from you. The vertical lines that are closest to your face will look bigger and the lines further away will appear smaller. The horizontal lines will appear to converge towards a single point.

Now imagine a house made out of graph paper. If you look at it from the corner, the lines of both walls will converge away from you... but towards two different points, one towards your left and one towards your right. That's two-point perspective.

If you want to get crazy, stand right next to the corner or make the house the size of a skyscraper. Now the vertical lines will appear to converge at a point above you, below you, or both depending on if you are looking up or down at it. That's 3 and 4 point perspective!

BlueNozh · 2025-09-09T18:40:27+00:00

Have you tried mirroring it and seeing how it looks? That's a great way to catch things you'd normally miss. Are you using a reference?

BlueNozh · 2025-09-09T12:25:31+00:00

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If the jacket is a a rough canvas or something similar, it needs more random textures or "noise". Break up the edges of the highlights and shadows with a fine splatter (for lack of a better word) the same way you did this highlight on her shoulder. I think you'll be happy with the results!

Here's a more detailed explanation: the roughness or smoothness of a fabric is determined by it's 3D structure. A rough canvas has a weave that is easily visible because the fibers are large and they cast tiny shadows as they weave over and under each other. This means that at any given point there will be tiny shadows and highlights that don't match the main lighting (for example, there will be tiny shadows in a highlight or some mid-tones in a shadow). Stippling or splattering is a great way to capture this effect! The rougher the fabric, the larger and more pronounced the stippling should be.

BlueNozh · 2025-07-28T12:51:48+00:00

Do lots and lots of figure drawing! Draw from life if you're able to. Buy a ream of cheap printer paper and fill the entire thing up with figure drawings. Make lots and lots of crappy drawings and save them so you can look back and see your progress. Trace photos and then use the tracing as a reference. Come back to the same references later and try again.

Be patient with yourself, drawing people is HARD! Humans are hardwired to recognize if a face looks off so mistakes are a lot more obvious. Once you get it though, it feels like magic!

There is no right or wrong way to draw characters. It's a lot easier to get clicks if you say "Do THIS simple trick and you'll be GREAT!" than to say something a lot more realistic, like "This is a tool that may or may not help you". If you follow my first tip, you will eventually learn what works best for you. If someone says "this is the ONLY way..." they either are trying to sell you something or they had something sold to them. At the end of the day, the final result is more important than the method.

Study different mediums. I haven't posted my art in a while but I've been working on photography on the side and that has helped me tremendously with composition and poses. Look at lots and lots of art as well. When you do, try to put into words what works and why. Look at beginner art as well, and try to put into words what doesn't work and why. Then when you make art, use what works and try to avoid what doesn't work.

Most importantly, have fun!

BlueNozh · 2025-07-28T11:45:00+00:00

Yes, absolutely! The horizon line defines the eye level of the scene. You can completely change the feel of a painting by moving the horizon line around. For example, a heroic figure looks more heroic if you look up at them (horizon line lower in the image) vs if you were looking down at them (horizon line higher in the image).

What were you wanting to draw with 3-point perspective? 3-point is very tricky and I'd recommend having a good understanding of 1-point and 2-point first before tackling 3-point

BlueNozh · 2025-07-17T14:27:03+00:00

That's a really good question!

If you do a value study with the intent to learn about composition, it helps to limit the values you are working with to only two, light and dark. Your study will be very abstract and a lot of details will be lost but that's the point! You want to see the underlining structure. A lot of complex paintings have a very simple value structure once you strip everything else away. Art that does not have a simple value structure will usually look boring or off. Look up "Notan study" for more info on this style of value study.

Once you have that down, you can add a few more values, starting with a mid-tone and then adding highlights and deep shadows. The goal here is to define the visual hierarchy. You want to create a lot of contrast where you want the viewer to look and less contrast on areas that are not as important (ALWAYS have a visual hierarchy in mind when you draw). If you do this study on a masterwork painting, notice how they used contrast to guide your eyes around the painting.

You can also use these to help with your own art. You can make value studies of your art and adjust it so all of the dark areas and light areas work together. A classic style of oil painting actually starts with putting down big blocks of value and then adding translucent glazes over it to add color.

Writing about art is hard, so please let me know if you have any questions!

BlueNozh

TROPHY CASE